y during
the last quarter of a century. At the present time there are scores of
dailies, and many more weeklies and monthlies, published in the
English tongue by the natives of the land. And they discuss, with
intelligence and discrimination, if not with moderation, all matters
of State and of political interest. Recently some of these papers have
become thoroughly radical and oppose the government at all points.

But it is the vernacular Press, representing, as it does, hundreds of
newspapers in all the tongues of India, that carries its influence
into the villages and homes of the uneducated millions. The present
condition of discontent with the government has been disseminated
among the common people more by these vernacular papers than by any
other agency. Many of these are thoroughly disloyal and seditious.
Very occasionally they are prosecuted for their inflammatory
editorials, and their editors are imprisoned.

As a matter of fact, there is hardly any country where the Press has
greater liberties than in India; and there is no land on earth where
that liberty is more abused. The very toleration of the government is
turned as a keen weapon against it.

The same thing is true of the freedom of public speech. There is not
another land, save perhaps America, whose citizens have greater
privileges in this matter. The seditious speeches which have been made
in many parts of India during the last two years, by Bengalees
specially, and by a few other radicals, have been such as would in
Europe lead to imprisonment if not to deportation. Bepin Chandra Pal,
of Calcutta, has just closed a tour during which he has made many
addresses, attended, in all cases, by thousands of students and
disaffected members of the community, and has not only denounced the
government as the very incarnation of unrighteousness and cruelty, but
has also urged the people to do all they can, both constitutionally
and otherwise, to defeat and overthrow it and to establish a native
rule upon its ruin. Any government, in order to ignore such language
uttered in immense public assemblies, must feel very secure in its
power. Mr. Pal is only one of many who have thus far been granted
absolute freedom to sow broadcast the seed of revolution.

III

What is there in the recent condition of the country and of the
people, which warrants this unrest and discontent?

Disinterested persons will not say that the State is unprogressive or
is administeri